I don't know, doesn't a car sustain a lot of damage if it hits a deer?

Karen

Ohhh yes. I had a driving job and drove a Range Rover, a heavy car to be sure.
A deer came up thru a culvert as I was passing and lept over the hood and the dammages amounte to 5 G.
Many drivers are not so lucky. Deer went thru a windshield of a driver on an expressway around our city.He lost a lot of his face and needed countless plastic surgeries just to be able to see and eat the rest of his life.

I believe deer kills on the road are sent to fertilizer plants. Not sure about this,might be different from state to stare

Maybe the difference is how fast your car is going, if you just roll over it, your car may have no damage. Here's part of an article about TX road kill salvaging:

"As it stands, picking up roadkill is a crime. Partly, this is because of health-and-safety concerns (hard to know what vile pathogens might be swarming over any given carcass), partly it's to discourage people from using their cars as hunting weapons. (This has actually been documented. In a 2012 Dallas Morning News story, a state game warden's staffer recalled a couple of incidents in which motorists intentionally ran over exotic deer in Kerr County, right in Nathan's backyard."

This guy, Tink Nathan, is trying to get the salvage ban lifted in TX. Leave it up to the person whether the deer is safe to eat, or not. Which may sound like a good idea, until people start aiming for the deer, off season, just because it's easier than hunting. As I said, I believe most people will use any law, or lack of a law to their own advantage. So, then you have the people who hit the deer on purpose, and say to the game warden, "it ran in front of my car".

kqcrna said:I don't know, doesn't a car sustain a lot of damage if it hits a deer?

Karen

Yes they do Karen. I can't imagine anyone hitting a deer on purpose because the cost of repairs to your car is far more than the value of the meat you might get from the deer, even if you could keep it We've had two of our vehicles damaged from hitting deer. They came out of deep ditches and jumped out right in front of us so there was no way to avoid them. It is very scary driving at night here because of them.

That's what I was thinking. I'd never deliberately drive my car into something the size of a deer. I'd question the intelligence of anyone who did that.

Karen

Driving into a deer is a risky proposition. As said above, why damage a expensive car.
Not to mention things never go according to how you think they will.

The damage to the car is more than cosmetic, it will almost always damage glass, lights ect and will not pass a safety inspection, thus until it is fixed- no tags-can't drive. Only a fool would hit deer on purpose. Just because one crazy idiot was documented driving onto someone else's property to hit a deer on purpose is not reason enough to prevent someone from keeping a deer they hit. Also, deer are unpredictable and fast so hitting one on purpose is probably more difficult than it would seem. It is not a reliable hunting method, that is nuts. Many, many times a deer is hit by a car and runs off. In fact many times a deer can be shot and still run for long ways and not be found. They are very strong. So whatever reasons the 'law' has for not allowing people to keep a deer they hit while driving-I don't know for the life of me. But I don't believe their logic for one minute. It's hogwash.

ge1836 said:There are problems hunting everywhere on the east coast.
Many farmers do not allow hunting on their open lands and it is impossible in areas where there are developments and parks and suburbs.
The controlled kill in my sisters town cant give the meat away because there are no stations for dressing the deer. If bow and arrow hunting in the controlled area is allowed only a few hunters will be allowed to hunt and they will take the deer and dress it themselves for their own use.
The hunters are screened and vetted so no fly by night crazies will be allowed to hunt. The DEC strictly controles the whole process. It really makes sense.

That is sad. The fact that it is a controlled kill means it is planned and thus leaves no excuse for wasting the meat. I'm sure if it were offered, there would be people take it. Let them worry about dressing it themselves. Not everyone is helpless, but alas the gooberment on any level cannot be convinced of that.
Many farmers are reluctant to allow hunting on their property because of theft, drug use, vandalism, littering ect. Not to mention that if someone is hurt on the property, they could be held liable. If deer control were the issue it should be, the farmers would be supplied with hunters that have already been screened and drug tested, ect and sign a waiver for liability. Then they may be more apt to allow hunting.

We have tons of deer around here, I HATE them. Sometimes I have to stop and honk at them in the subdivision to get them to move off the road! I am sure they will try to be in my garden. It will be war and I am pretty determined, so electric wire may be used!

Where we lived in Oregon, the Fish and Wildlife Department would supply you with deer fencing. You might check.

When a deer or moose is hit by a vehicle here, the conservation officer is called and then they have a person that picks up the animal, dresses it and the meat is given to the needy.

I hate to keep thinking about what happens to all those roadkills. If the meat isn't given to those who can eat it, what actually happens to it. They can't really just throw it in a dump?

@mcash70 I am glad to hear that the meat will get eaten.

I know. It would make so much sense to, rather than penalizing drivers who have unfortunate run-ins with local deer, to encourage them to report the incident so that the meat could be salvaged to feed the hungry.

Here most of the road kill is dragged off the road and eaten by birds and animals. Although it is a shame people don't get it, a lot of the time the deer is so damaged it wouldn't be good meat anyway. It keeps the eagles fed and healthy.

>> I would think it's {sterilization} a better option for the deer than killing or slow starvation due to disease.

How would that work? Chemicals in bait? Catch / spay / release? That last one sounds expensive.

I would have guessed that feral deer were like feral cats, and that more would drift in from the edges of any area where all the locals were sterile, until the local sterile + fertile population density was high enough to keep newcomers out. But would that density be low enough to eliminate the original problems like malnutrition, crop destruction and car accidents?

Or would the sterilization program be ongoing, so that fertile deer that drifted into the region would be poisoned or caught and sterilized before they had many fawns?

I don't think that "reducing their numbers" can work for more than a few years. They do seem to reproduce fast whenever there is any browse.

>> When herd density becomes critical they become malnourished because there isnt enough "browse"

I agree. That seems like the cruelest option of all. "Just let them starve." And malnutrition does cause more diseases and probably stillborn fawns. And stripping all the bark off all remaining natural vegetation isn't responsible either. Destroying even the remaining bits of forest or range should be prevented - it's all a consequence of our moving into an area and turning forests into subdivisions.

A deer jumped in front of a friend in a small old car, and both the car and deer were "totaled". Maybe that meant that the cost of repairs was more than the value of the (old) car. He was wearing a seat belt and not seriously injured. Maybe a newer car would have been so light that the deer would be injured less and my friend would have been injured more.

My feeling is that, anywhere we've cleared most of the forest that was their habitat and eliminated their natural predators, we are responsible for managing their numbers. Probably that means that we are obligated to become their (humane) predators. Harvest them as painlessly as possible (i.e. responsible hunting by trained hunters).

Being squeamish or shortsighted is not enough excuse to let the consequences of residential development torture the herd and destroy the rest of the remaining local ecosystem.

I was horrified at first to learn that professional hunters were brought in to "slaughter" enough deer to keep them from starving, and they left "a mountain" of bones and offal in an Oregon town where my SO lived. Allegedly the carcasses were thrown over some cliff, which doesn't sound very good for public health and sanitation! (Probably it was the lowest-cost solution.)

It does seem like a huge amount of meat was wasted. My guess is that the "animal control department" wouldn't spend any of its budget to help the "social services department" or private food banks - or poor people. Couldn't the funding be found to pay for some dressing and butchering and hauling, when the value of the meat saved would be so much more than the costs? Or are there "well-intentioned" regulations that prohibit common sense?

I don't know what else to suggest. Frequent semi-pro "hunts" or "slaughters", with budgets for saving the meat and regulatory relief from unhelpful regulations?

In that neighborhood, even BB guns were strictly forbidden. Maybe residents there were such total Elmer Fudds that hunting really would have been unsafe. It was fairly dense residential with patches of State land and a few large farms visible on the other side of the gorge. My guess is that the most important training needed would have been "don't shoot a deer when the backdrop is a house".

But even after the big one-time slaughter, "herds" of deer still wandered every yard, eating anything green, like Sherman's march to the sea. Previous owners had put a wire cage around some bush that looked like sage. It was invariably trimmed back flush to the wire by deer.

The only people who had any garden had a Stalag-style fence around it. Big, big yards with almost nothing green in any of them.

There was a local mountain lion or big wild cat of some kind. From the number of scattered bones, it must have been one fat cat. Needless to say, there were NO pets off leash for long in that town.